Month: September 2022

Authored by Shawn Amick via BitcoinMagazine.com,

The D.C. AG alleges that Saylor and MicroStrategy conspired to commit tax evasion by fraudulently representing Saylor’s primary residence from 2005 to present.

• Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy are being sued by D.C.

• The complaint alleges the former CEO conspired with the company to commit tax evasion.

• The lawsuit calls for more than $25 million in back-taxes and penalties.

The largest corporate holder of bitcoin, MicroStrategy, and its Executive Chairman Michael Saylor are being sued by the District of Columbia (D.C.) for alleged tax fraud, per an announcement from the D.C. Attorney General.

NEW: Today, we’re suing Michael Saylor – a billionaire tech executive who has lived in the District for more than a decade but has never paid any DC income taxes – for tax fraud.

— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) August 31, 2022

The complaint alleges that Saylor knowingly avoided income taxes to D.C. while fraudulently claiming to be a resident of a lower tax jurisdiction while maintaining his residence in D.C.

“If you enjoy all the benefits of living in our great city while refusing to pay your fair share in taxes, we will hold you accountable,” said DC Attorney General Karl Racine.

Additionally, the complaint alleges that MicroStrategy conspired with Saylor by intentionally obfuscating his real address to local and federal tax authorities.

“On information and belief, from 2005 to the present, Saylor has avoided more than $25 million in District taxes owed,” reads the complaint.

Moreover, the complaint recalls events back to 1980’s when Saylor originally founded the company, to the relocation of the company’s headquarters to avoid tax burdens in the 90’s, to his supposed routine use of yachts anchored in the Potomac River over many years.

“Defendant Saylor has been domiciled in the District, or a statutory resident of the District, or both, in each taxable year from 2005 through the present,” the lawsuit continues.

The complaint claims that Saylor also made multiple “contemptuous” social media posts on Facebook, supporting the claim that he has lived in the area from 2005 to present.

Michael Saylor must be the only exec ever to live in DC while pretending to live in Florida.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 31, 2022

More recently, it was announced that Saylor would be stepping down from the aforementioned role of CEO to take on the position of Executive Chairman. The move was meant to enable Saylor to focus on bitcoin initiatives in the ecosystem as well as continuing to drive MicroStrategy’s bitcoin acquisition strategy. 

The last time we showed readers the North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) was nearly two years ago, during the early days of the virus pandemic, when thousands of hungry and unemployed lined up in their vehicles to receive care packages. Now demand for food banks is surging, but for different reasons, as household finances are crushed by inflation and can barely afford essential items at supermarkets. 

Trisha Cunningham, CEO of NTFB, told CBS News that demand for her food bank “is worse than a couple of years ago — we are serving now at higher levels than we even did at the peak of the pandemic.”

While inflation has begun to cool, food prices remain high, making it difficult for many families to afford even basic groceries. Food banks across the country are feeling the impact of high prices, with long lines and new faces as more families struggle to make ends meet. pic.twitter.com/HdFNFK1y9e

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) August 29, 2022

The overwhelming answer that CBS found of why people are lining up at the food bank is “that they can’t afford groceries.” 

One person told CBS, “it’s just the basics: flour, sugar, egg, and milk” prices that have spiraled out of control, adding, “we don’t buy cookies and cakes because we don’t have that luxury anymore.” 

CBS pointed out that 53 million Americans relied on food banks in 2021, compared to 40 million in 2019, which means a whopping 13 million new Americans can’t afford essential items at supermarkets. 

None of this comes as a surprise as consumers, mainly on the lower tier, have drained savings and maxed out credit cards to survive the highest inflation in forty years. 

A slew of retailers warned that lower-income consumers aren’t in great shape this summer despite the Biden administration touting that everything is wonderful ahead of the midterm elections in November. 

The latest consumer sentiment is at record lows because lower-income consumers have fewer resources to buffer against inflation. 

Food banks are back and could see even more demand as the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive monetary tightening in decades will cause the unemployment rate to climb.

It has not been a good week for Nvidia, and now it just got worse as shares are down over 5% in after-hours trading after the firm warned that new rules governing the export of A- chips to China may affect hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

In a regulatory filing Wednesday, the giant chipmaker that the U.S. has installed new license requirements for its A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuits — Nvidia’s highest-performance products for servers — in sales to China and Russia.

Nvidia’s filing specifically states that Nvidia’s forecast for the current quarter includes an expected $400 million in data-center sales to China that could be affected by the move; Nvidia does not currently sell products in Russia.

“The new license requirement may impact the company’s ability to complete its development of H100 in a timely manner or support existing customers of A100 and may require the company to transition certain operations out of China,” the SEC filing reads.

“The company is engaged with the [U.S. government] and is seeking exemptions for the company’s internal development and support activities.”

Nvidia said that the federal government’s new license requirements are meant to “address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia.”

“We are working with our customers in China to satisfy their planned or future purchases with alternative products and may seek licenses where replacements aren’t sufficient,” an Nvidia spokesperson said in an emailed statement to MarketWatch.

“The only current products that the new licensing requirement applies to are A100, H100 and systems such as DGX that include them.”

The company reportedly only received the notification on Aug. 26 and was already facing a sales slump, triggered by lower demand for personal computers.

Other US chipmakers (AMD and Intel) also saw shares decline in after-hours trading, though Nvidia appears to be the company most impacted by the decision.

Update: it appears that unlike March 2021, a new transportation crisis will be avoided, as the tanker that ran aground and briefly blocked Suez traffic, has successfully refloated:

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority successfully refloats the Affinity V crude oil tanker#Egypt pic.twitter.com/kp9H72JnfU

— Daily News Egypt (@DailyNewsEgypt) August 31, 2022

* * *

Earlier:

More than a year after the Ever Given containership got stuck for 6 days in the Suez Canal, snarling already broken post-Covid supply chains, moments ago we learned that navigation in the critical canal linking the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean, and which handles about 5% of global daily crude oil and 8% of LNG flows, has again been halted after a Singapore-flagged oil tanker run aground in the Suez.

According to preliminary reports, the ship that has run aground is the Affinity V oil tanker sailing under a Singapore flag.

Egypt Daily News tweeted that the tugboats from the Suez Canal Authority are currently freeing the tanker:

Crude oil tanker Affinity V ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal, tugboats from Suez Canal Authority are currently freeing it.#Egypt #SuezCanal #AffinityV pic.twitter.com/CYRofmBuRg

— Daily News Egypt (@DailyNewsEgypt) August 31, 2022

It is unclear how bad the blockage is, and how quickly the ship can be freed but as of this moment navigation through the Suez has been stopped. Which is a problem for Europe, as in the absence of Russian pipeline gas flows, and with US LNG exports to Europe still suspended due to the Freeport terminal fire, the continent has become almost exclusively reliant on Beijing LNG (which as we reported yesterday is just Russian LNG repackaged and resold at a much higher price to gullible Europeans).